Thursday Inspiration-Island

RDP: Looking Within

Photo A.M. Moscoso

Isolation- Social Distancing-anxiety and panic.

That is the state of the world right now Unless you’re a Millennial who thinks you are immune from Covid-19 and shouldn’t be punished with the rest of us or you politics are such that you’re willing- as a minister in Arkansas said of his congregation- most of them are willing to lick the floor to prove this Virus isn’t real” then your world went from big and limitless to your home, your car and Netflix.

Some of us are finding creative ways to fill  your days, sending out words of encouragement to our friends that you are making it and they will too.

We are all in this together.

But here’s the kicker.

Some of us, the ones who suffer from depression, who have trouble connecting to a world that is so big and so vast and so overwhelming that it feels like your in a box and that box gets smaller everyday- this world the one we are all in right now seems horribly familiar.

I’ve been in that unquiet world- off and on over the years.

I’ve been isolated. I have distanced myself from the people around me-this six foot distance thing was a snap for me to embrace because I had done it already. Anxiety and her brother Panic used to visit me often. I could be  watching TV sitting in my car, walking my dog and BOOM there they’d be.

Now  it feels  as if the world I had been living in inside of my head somehow found it’s way to the world around me and now it has a physical presence.

So here is the thing.

It’s been awhile since I’ve suffered from severe depression, but I remember how it felt.

Most important of all, I found ways to deal with Isolation.

That’s why when my friends are talking about struggling with this isolation, how they miss being connected to the world around them and the anxiety of not knowing when it will end, I am truly sympathetic. I really do feel your pain.

But this world doesn’t scare me- I’ve been to one almost exactly like it often and even though I haven’t been there for a few years I might find myself there again.

At that point people won’t be locked down in their homes, they’ll return to their lives and going to restaurants and they won’t be obsessing over toilet paper and who provides unattended delivery service.

As for me  I don’t have that luxury. I can end up back in this world upside down place- because sometimes my brain just fails me. Luckily for me, I usually find my way back so I can say for sure that it can be done.

Recently I have been going over a line from one of my favorite Movies- Barton Fink.

At the end of Barton Fink, his friend Charlie Meadows ( who has demons of his own-in fact I guess you could say he IS one ) turns to Barton and says before he walks down the hall  to his burning room:

Charlie Meadows : Take a look around this dump. You’re just a tourist with a typewriter, Barton. I live here.

People are isolated, they are feeling overwhelmed and they can look at the world around them but they can’t touch it.

What they don’t realize is that most of them will get to go back to their lives.

But I’m like Charlie, I’m not a tourist in this world.

I’ve  have room next to Charlie’s and sometimes, whether I want to or not- I go back there.

amm